Part 14

A ringing volley knocked over four of the leaders, but still on they came. Another shot sent a fifth chieftain to the Great Beyond, and, as the trappers reloaded, the Sioux seemed to lose heart. They swerved aside from the breastwork, offering excellent targets to the plainsmen, and, with a dull thud, still another red warrior fell from his galloping pinto. Two of the trappers, meanwhile, were wounded by bullets, while an arrow stuck into the coat sleeve of Jim Bridger, himself.

Now retiring beyond range, the redskins kept up a perpetual fusillade with rifles and with arrows. The trappers held their fire, threw up still higher entrenchments, and waited for the next onslaught, but this did not come. Instead, the Sioux lighted the long, dry prairie grass, and a sheet of flame and smoke curled surely and steadily towards the band of plainsmen, for the wind was blowing directly upon them. What were they to do now?

Necessity is the mother of invention. Quick as a flash, Jim Bridger leaped across the embankment, touched the grass off immediately in front of them, and burnt off quite a small alley-way before the roaring crackling flames came to their place of refuge. The force of the flames thus spent itself before the embankment was reached, and the wily savages renewed their whooping and yelling. Again they charged, but again they were driven off; while night closed over both besieger and besieged, bringing a lull to the unequal battle.

Next day the fight was renewed, and all five of the trappers were wounded. Towards evening it was decided that one of the party should creep through the lines and bring aid from a camp of fifty trappers, who were some miles down the river. The choice fell upon Jim Bridger, and it found him ready to undertake the hazardous expedition. At twelve o’clock he crawled over the side of the little fortification and wormed his way towards the fringe of red warriors who lay about them in a circle.

The scout kept on as quietly as he could and crawled for fully two hundred yards before he saw, or heard, anything of the redskins. Then he got to his feet (as he considered himself through their lines) and prepared to run. But before him was an Indian pony, its master sound asleep by its side. The horse had been feeding in a deep ravine, and—suddenly scenting the trapper—gave a snort which roused its master. The Sioux warrior gazed stupidly at the frontiersman.

But Bridger did not take long to make up his mind what to do. He dashed towards the Indian, intending to strangle him before he could give the alarm. The redskin uttered a loud whoop, and his companions immediately ran in his direction. The scout realized that nothing was now to be gained by silence, and, pulling out his pistol, shot the red man dead. Then, leaping upon his mustang, he urged him upon the gallop. The Sioux were all around him on their pintos, but he had the good fortune to be upon one of their fastest horses, which seemed to outdistance any of the pursuers.

It was a hot chase. The red men fired again and again at the fleeing trapper but they could not hit him. His mustang leaped over the deep crevasses, dodged badger and prairie-dog holes, and brought him safely to the camp of his companions by two o’clock in the afternoon. The Sioux had given up the chase, and, little suspecting that other trappers were camped near by, had returned to the siege of the four, hoping now to make one sudden rush and gain their scalps. Their blood was up, for twenty-five of their number had fallen before the accurate fire of the besieged.

“Come at once!” cried the panting Bridger, as he reached the camp of the plainsmen. “If you do not hurry, my four companions will all be massacred by the red men. To horse! To horse!”

It did not take the trappers long to catch their ponies and jump into their saddles.

“Show us where your friends are!” cried they, “and we’ll fix th’ redskins before another sun.”

Bridger turned and piloted the band of plainsmen back to the place where he had left his beleaguered companions. They went on the run, but, making a wide détour in order to gain the sand-hills in the rear of the besiegers, waited until morning. Then they heard rifle shots in the distance and knew that the battle was on again.

Creeping towards the sound of firing, they soon saw the Sioux preparing for a final charge upon the valorous four, and opened upon them. They had clustered together for a rush, and this weltering volley fairly took the heart out of those of small courage. Many fell dead,—the rest made all haste to get out of range,—while the four trappers in the embankment came running towards their deliverers like wild men. With yells of joy they hugged the burly form of Jim Bridger, to whose nerve and courage they owed their lives.

The scout and plainsman soon moved from the upper waters of the Missouri—after the fur trade had ceased to be prosperous—and founded a trading post in the southwestern part of the State of Wyoming—named Fort Bridger. Here he dealt in skins, furs, and peltries, accumulating a large amount of property, as the Fort was a stopping-place for all the emigrant trains bound for Salt Lake City and for California. He remained true to his Blackfoot wife, and several half-breed children made life merry in the long, low log-hut which the scout had erected as his abode. The famous plainsman lived to a ripe, old age—like most of the early trappers—and was ever ready to tell of his battle with the Sioux, when he rescued his four companions from their clutches. This was the most thrilling of all his many adventures upon the frontier.

“OLD BILL” WILLIAMS:

THE FAMOUS LOG RIDER OF COLORADO

“I HATE every Indian that I ever saw and would just as lief take a shot at one as eat!”

So spoke a raw-boned trapper, with a tangled mat of brown hair hanging across his shoulders, and, as he said this, he gazed vindictively toward some Indian warriors who were riding slowly past the wagon-train with which the plainsman was travelling. His comrades looked at him and laughed, for this was the favorite theme of Bill Williams, familiarly known as “Old Bill,” although this was a term of endearment and not because of his years, for he was as young as any of them.

The Indians rode on, and from their own glances, which they threw at the gaunt and ungainly trapper, it was plainly evident that they fully reciprocated the feeling which the plainsman held for them. “Ugh! He one bad man!” a gaudy warrior was heard to remark.

“Old Bill” Williams was born in Tennessee, his father being one of the Virginian pioneers who crossed the Blue Ridge and settled in the state when it was swarming with Indians,—all eager to have the land for themselves alone—and not willing to allow the whites to get possession of it without a severe struggle. His son grew up in surroundings of savagery and warfare. He took part in many of the Ohio campaigns against the red men in that state, and was invariably used as a scout, for his knowledge of woodcraft was excellent. After the red men were partially subdued, he moved further west to the Rockies, where his scouting habits still clung to him. He would often be absent for many weeks upon his solitary expeditions, and would as frequently return with scalps as with the furs of wild animals.

The Crows and the Blackfeet were continually at war with each other, with the advantage upon the side of the latter, for the Crows were more cowardly than their war-like enemies. They had the advantage, however, of having a white renegade to lead them. His name was Rose: formerly one of the land pirates who lived near and upon the treacherous waters of the Mississippi. This desperate man taught the redskins how to fight like the whites and continually advised them in their councils of war, so that they often defeated the Blackfeet in their sanguinary encounters.

One day “Old Bill” Williams was off on a scout with Bill Gordon, and, becoming separated from him, was endeavoring to reach camp by water, so as to leave no trail for the eye of some lurking Blackfoot warrior. He was therefore floating down stream on a log. As he reached a shallow part of the creek the muddied water and footprints upon the bank showed where a big grizzly had just gone by.

“By Gravy,” said the scout to himself, “here’s the chance to make a hundred dollars from that old fellow’s hide. I’m after him.”

Wading to the shore, he started off through the brush, and followed Bruin with his head down, for the bushes kept slapping him in the eyes. As he was thus proceeding, he suddenly debouched from the brush into a cleared space. Before him was no grizzly, but a band of ten Blackfoot warriors. They stopped in amazement, and so did Williams, who said in loud tones: “Gee-hos-i-phat!”

The Indians, on the other hand, set up a loud yelping, and, seeing them preparing to fire, “Old Bill” raised his trusty flint-lock, pulled the trigger, and knocked over a big, fine-looking savage who had on the war-bonnet of a chieftain. Not stopping to make closer acquaintance, the wiry Bill then dashed into a neighboring canyon. As he glanced over his shoulder he saw that only four of the Blackfeet were coming after him.

The scout raced along for about a quarter of a mile; then, seeing that the redskins were far behind, stopped in order to load his rifle. He had just rammed home a ball when the Blackfeet began to draw near, so he dropped behind the stump of a moss-grown tree and waited for them to come on. They approached quite hurriedly, gazing at the ground for tracks, and eagerly pointing out the traces of the trapper’s footprints. When they came within good range “Old Bill” pressed the trigger and a Blackfoot brave fell to the earth, shot through the heart.

“I reckon that this will stop ’em fer er minute er two,” said the man of the plains as he continued his flight up the canyon. He raced ahead for about a half a mile, then halted again in order to load his gun.

The Indians were soon upon him, but they had learned caution, and spread out on either side of him, in order to get in his rear. “Old Bill” was not to be caught napping, and ran like a deer still further up the divide. He was much swifter of foot than the red men, and soon left them far behind. The scout sat down upon a fallen tree trunk, and said to himself:

“Now, I’ll back track like a grizzly, and will get another shot at these painted hyenas.”

Suiting the action to the words, he put on a furious burst of speed for about a half a mile, then doubled back for about two hundred yards. To the right was some fallen timber, and into this the trapper skipped like a molly cotton-tail. “Ah ha!” said he. “I think this will get ’em!”

In a few moments the red warriors hastened by on the run: one of them about a hundred yards astern of the rest. As he came opposite the hiding-place of the scout, “Old Bill” leaped into view, and knocking him down with a well directed bullet, seized his victim’s gun just as another started to come back to where he was standing. This one was dispatched by the Blackfoot rifle, and “Old Bill” had the satisfaction of seeing the fourth (and last) savage run up the canyon in terror, screaming:

“The Great Spirit is with him! The Great Spirit is with him!”

As he disappeared a broad smile came to the face of the trapper, while he wiped the beads of perspiration from his brow.

“By Crickets!” said he. “A tight squeeze, Bill. A tight squeeze!”

I regret to state that the old fellow _scalped_ the dead redskins, for he was apparently as much of an Indian as were his enemies. He also took the precaution to plunge into a mountain stream which gurgled and rushed down a side of the canyon. He followed the water until he reached the mouth of the canyon, then, as he heard voices, dashed into a crevasse in the rocks. A number of Blackfeet soon went by.

“Where has the old wolf gone?” he heard one of them ask. “He runs like a rabbit.”

“You are right,” said another, “but he has an eye like a hawk, and can hold the shooting-stick without flinching. Go carefully! Go carefully! He may be hidden near by!”

They went on up the canyon, and not long afterwards a wailing and screeching came from their direction, showing that they had discovered their dead.

“This is no place for me,” mused the old scout. “I must get away quickly.”

Darting up a neighboring gully, he had just stowed himself away in a fissure of the rocky wall when he heard the Blackfeet returning. They were carrying their dead companions and were wailing dismally. “Old Bill” knew that there would be small chance for him should he fall into their clutches. The cold shivers ran up and down his spine as he contemplated such a happening.

For two days the trapper remained in the canyon. He was afraid to venture forth, because the Blackfeet were undoubtedly near by, and he knew that, once they again saw him, it would be all up with “Old Bill.” He had a tough, dried piece of buffalo meat with him, which kept up his strength, although he suffered terribly from thirst during the day, for he was afraid to venture to the stream until nightfall. Far off, in the valley, he could hear the death chant of the red men.

Three days passed and “Old Bill” was feeling faint from lack of food. Climbing the wall of the canyon, behind his place of refuge, he saw the Blackfeet far below him in the valley. They were moving camp. Hurrah! Their tepee poles were coming down and they were walking away. They gradually faded from view. Again Hurrah! The old scout was smiling now.

Luck was still with him, for he shot an antelope soon afterwards, cooked the stringy meat and felt stronger. Then he rolled a stout log loose from some fallen timber, pushed it into the river and paddled down stream upon this flimsy boat.

“I reckon I’ll dodge the redskins, now,” he said to himself. “A feller walkin’ leaves too good er trail.”

No savage eye detected him in his journey upon this log, and, about a week later, he arrived, smiling, at a frontier trading post. “Old Bill” was royally welcomed by his brother trappers, who slapped him on the back, drank his health, not once, but twenty times, and gave him a new rifle which they had just captured from some half-breeds.

“Old Bill” took this with good humor, for it was all in the day’s work of a scout upon the frontier. In a week he left upon another excursion into the wilds, and alone, for he was like a “solitary,” or buffalo bull, who roams the prairie away from the rest of the herd. He preferred to be without associates in his work. “Two men,” said he, “leave a broader trail than one, and there are many Indians in the country. Two men make more noise. I go alone.”

“He was a great hunter,” said an old Indian. “He was a great trapper—took many beaver—and a great warrior, for his belt was full of scalps. But he have no friend: no squaw. Always by himself. He like the eagle in the heavens, or the panther in the mountains. He one strange man.”

Yes, “Old Bill” was a strange man, but he lived his life upon the frontier for many years without a mishap, although his body bore the marks of many an encounter. Silent and taciturn, those who were associated with him knew only of his deeds by the fresh scalps at his girdle, the notches upon the stock of his gun, and the scars upon the exposed portion of his body. His traps yielded him a small living, and with this he seemed to be content.

The trapper lived to be an old man. Although in innumerable skirmishes and hand-to-hand encounters with the Blackfeet, Crows, Sioux, and other wild riders of the plains, he came off scot free until he met a band of Blackfeet when trapping near the headwaters of the Missouri River. Here he was surrounded by twenty or thirty braves, but, by skillfully climbing his pony down the shelving sides of a canyon, made his escape. They found his tracks, however, and followed him like a pack of hounds after a fox.

“Old Bill” still was lithe and active, although sixty years, and more, of age. Again and again he hid himself, and, with two or three shots, laid out as many of the advancing redskins. He was fortunate in being able to keep away from the vindictive warriors for four full days, although wounded twice: an arrow point in his thigh and a bullet through the fleshy part of his leg. Finally, he reached a series of canyons near the Yellowstone, where numerous streams made it possible for him to leave little trace of his trail, and great boulders of rock hid his retreating form. The red men here gave up the chase, for their quarry defied both fatigue and wounds.

“The Great Spirit is still with the Lone Wolf,” said they. “We will let him go, for here he can kill many of us before we can reach him.”

It was November. A bleak wind blew gusts of snow across the sandy plain as the red warriors retreated. “Old Bill” continued on his way into the advancing storm. The white flakes now covered the earth. A bitter wind assailed him, and great piles of drifting snow whirled and eddied about his gaunt and emaciated form. Dismounting under the side of a projecting cliff, he made a fire by means of rubbing two dried sticks together, ate some _biltong_, which he fortunately had stowed away in a saddle-bag, and lay down to rest. His poor, shivering pony cropped the dry bunches of grass in silent misery.

Two weeks later a party of trappers were crossing the stream near the place where the old fellow had lain down, and saw a pony nibbling the bark from a cottonwood tree. He was gaunt, famished, and his ribs were fairly sticking through his flesh. They rode up to him and were much distressed to see the form of a man lying beneath the white mantle of newly fallen snow. They brushed this away and found “Old Bill;” his grizzled head bent forward upon his breast, and his clothing stained with the wounds which had sapped his very life-blood. He had gone to the Great Beyond.

With tears in their eyes the trappers hollowed out a grave for the lone refugee. Here they buried him, and finding his faithful steed unwilling to leave the place where he had carried his master, shot the emaciated animal. They placed both in the same grave, and over their forms erected a huge pile of stones, not only to mark the last resting-place of “Old Bill,” but also to keep the wolves and coyotes from digging up the remains.

Thus, in a wild canyon perished the aged solitary, and in the peace and quiet of that wilderness in which he loved to wander, hovers the spirit of the lonely man of the plains. His last resting-place well suited the career of “Old Bill:” trapper, scout, and fearless adventurer among the savage men, wild beasts, and inhospitable wastes of the then unpeopled West.

“BIG FOOT” WALLACE:

NOTED RANGER ON THE TEXAN FRONTIER

ABOUT the year 1839, a Waco Indian chieftain lived in the State of Texas, whose feet were of such giant proportions that he was called “Big Foot.” He was a bold and daring fellow. Often, when darkness hid his movement, he would sneak into the frontier town of Austin, would kill whom he could, and would carry off horses and other property. In vain the settlers tried to dispatch him, for he was a veritable scourge to the settlements.

The fellow was a physical giant, being six feet seven inches in height, of muscular build, and weighing about three hundred pounds. His tracks measured fourteen inches, from heel to toe, so you can readily see that the name that was applied to him was not ill chosen. Often these footprints would be seen in the sandy soil, after he had committed one of his thieving expeditions, and the settlers used to cry out:

“Good-by to our horses! Old ‘Big Foot’ is around again. Good-by!”

One evening the big Indian came into Austin, and, after prowling around for a time, committed some theft upon the property of a settler named Gravis. He then went to the cabin occupied by a huge, lanky ranger called Wallace. Next morning Gravis trailed the Indian to the doorstep of the pioneer, and, without trying to trace it any further, aroused the owner of the cabin.

“See here, Wallace,” said he, “you’ve been stealing from my place and I intend to get even with you. No one has as big feet as you have around here, and I have found your tracks leading from my hut to your very door.”

The accused man grew angry and prepared to whip the other.

“Look here,” said Gravis, at this juncture, “if you prove to me that these are not your footprints you can go clear and I will apologize.”

He stepped aside, as he spoke, and Wallace immediately went to the Indian’s track. He placed his foot in it, exclaiming:

“By Gravy, Gravis, this is old ‘Big Foot,’ the Injin’s, track. Can’t you see that it’s mor’n two inches longer than my own!”

The first speaker bent over the marks with an exclamation of astonishment.

“You’re right,” said he. “Wallace, old man, I beg your pardon.” And, shaking him warmly by the hand, he walked away.

While this was going on, a man named Fox came to the doorway of Wallace’s hut. He had been spending the night there, for he was a business partner of the frontiersman. As his friend turned towards the cabin, he cried out gleefully:

“Well, well, old scout. When ‘Big Foot’—the Indian—is not around we will all call _you_ ‘Big Foot.’ Ha! Ha! That’s a good one, I swan. ‘Big Foot’ you’ll be from henceforth.”

And that is the way that William Alexander Anderson Wallace came to be called “Big Foot” Wallace.

Born in Lexington, Virginia, in 1817, this intrepid frontiersman came of good, old Scottish stock, and stock that was of fighting spirit, for two of his uncles were killed in the battle of Guilford Court House. The Wallaces were all of powerful build, and the hero of our sketch was six feet two inches in height (in his moccasins) and weighed two hundred and forty pounds. He had long arms, large hands, and thick, curly, black hair. One of his uncles was nearly seven feet tall and his brother was six feet five inches in height.

As a young fellow, “Big Foot” Wallace had little of the excitement which was to come to him in later years. When about twenty years of age war commenced between the American colonists and Mexicans for the possession of Texas. Many young men went from Virginia to assist the Texans in driving out the soldiers under Santa Anna, among them Samuel Wallace, the older brother of William with the big feet. Samuel was killed in the massacre of Colonel Fannin’s men at Goliad, which has been described in “Famous Scouts,” and with him were also dispatched three cousins of our hero. When the news of this affair reached Lexington, Virginia, great was the grief among the relatives of these brave and valiant frontiersmen, and William was much upset by it.

“I am going to Texas,” he cried out. “And I intend to spend my life in killing Mexicans. Those men who could massacre my brother after he had surrendered and had been disarmed, can expect no quarter from me. I intend to have revenge!”

He had splendid opportunities in later years to make good this threat.

Taking ship from New Orleans to Galveston, William soon set foot on Texan soil. The war was over. Santa Anna had been defeated and captured the year before, at the famous battle of San Jacinto, and Texas was now an independent republic. So the young ranger drifted to Colorado, where he was soon surrounded by a large party of Indians and was captured. They carried him to their camp, but he only remained there a week, before he slipped away, eluded his pursuers, and got back to the settlement of San Antonio. His restless spirit could not be confined to the streets of a city and he soon went far to the southwest, where he camped and hunted along the Medina River. Finally he built a cabin there and lived the life of a lone huntsman and trapper in a region which was infested by Indians, horse-thieves, and fugitives from justice.